Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of computer processors. More particularly, the invention relates to an apparatus and method for intelligently powering heterogeneous processor components such as cores, graphics units, and other functional units.
Description of the Related Art
The power budgets in modern energy-constrained and thermally-constrained handheld devices are very meager. However, consumers are expecting more and more functionality in these devices which requires more and more computational power. To this end, many computational elements are present in the processors used in current handheld devices, typically implemented as a system-on-a-chip (SoC).
Previous solutions have generally taken each computational component in the SoC in isolation to work towards energy efficiency. These solutions employ techniques such as duty cycling, power and clock gating, issue-width reduction, frequency changing, etc., to change the power/performance characteristic of a given computational component.
What is needed is a processor such as a SoC which will provide exceptional performance but which will still operate under a tight power and thermal envelope.